Some people wait until their baby is a few weeks old before they give them a name.
Makes sense to me, you want a name that suits you right? After all, it’s yours forever — unless you want to go through the hoo-ha of legally changing it, or the confusion of having a nickname on your ticket to Bali that doesn’t match your passport . . . awkward!
The thing about pets is, they don’t have passports. Well, some might — Paris Hilton’s chihuahua probably has a passport.
I’d guess that most pet owners are guilty of having several names for their pets — 90% of which make no sense to anyone, especially the pet.
Where am I going with this?
Weenus. That’s the name of my dog.
Well, it’s not his real name. His real name is Merle Haggard.
He also happens to be deaf, so it doesn’t really matter what I call him, as long as the hand signals all look the same. That way he can know what I’m telling him and then choose to ignore me anyway.
Why Weenus? I’m not completely sure, but it kind of suits a dog who looks like a combination of Scrat, from Ice Age, and Dobby, the house elf, from Harry Potter.
He also likes to wee on things — all of the things. It’s hard to tell a deaf dog not to wee on curtains. When you are on the other side of the room, yelling isn’t going to work — that little bro needs a shoulder tap and a side-to-side head shake.
He was almost named Hank Williams jun, to go with the late Hank Williams (rest in peace) — pound mutt and general menace to society.
Hank also had many names. His name evolved from Hank to Pants (keep up if you can) — Hank, Hankle Spankles, Spankles, Spankle Pants, Pants.
Perfectly normal, right?
Dog names also become nouns. When I see a spunky, nuggety, tough-looking pound dog, I think ‘Oh that’s such a Hank!’. When I see a wiry, speedy, focused, awkward collie-type dog, ‘Oh that’s such a Weenus’.
I currently have another collie pup at home — Slim Shady is her name.
She is destined to be a farm dog, but I may have ruined her with naps by the fire and walks downtown for coffee. The mountains may not be her destiny after all, but she is keen on herding the cat, Jagger, who also has many names, most of which contain swear words.
Slim Shady has earned the unofficial name of Baby Weenus. I am starting her on Weenus team training to build my team for a sport that is called ‘‘bikejor’’ — Google it, I didn’t know it had a name, I just attached some dogs to my bike and cracked on.
The deaf Weenus will be the brains and the focus of the operation, and Baby Weenus will be the ears, if all goes to plan.
The original Weenus is a somewhat reluctant adventure dog — but he has been hiking, biking, paddle boarding and, hopefully one day canoeing when I get some roof racks.
I anticipate the new Weenus on the block might be a slightly more enthusiastic participant, although neither are terribly excited about water sports.
They have their own Instagram account @weenusdogs. It was originally an account for wobbly cat Patsy Stone (rest in peace), who was found in the cemetery, and was also known as Patsy Poo Cat for semi-obvious reasons.
So my point was, what’s in a name anyway?
